So, my wife gets an IPhone 4. She does not know what she has. She had some sort if goofy flip type phone that texting was hard and did not show all of the message, did not get email, did not get internet, …. it was just like an old technology phone that was klunkier than an Edsel. I hated it. We would laugh at it. Me and the kids have macs. All in. But she resisted….until today.

Now, let me tell you this. She does not know what she has. She has an Iphone4 but does not know how to work it. She does not know all it has to offer. She does not know all that is is capable of. She does not know all that it can do. She does not know all that it was made to do. She does not appreciate the power of it in a traffic jam to get around stuff. She does not know the power it has to skype all over the world. She does not know the power of money and purchasing it has. She does not know …… well, the power and ability of all it was meant to be. Then, I sit on the porch and think about me and God.

God has all this power, all this salvation, all this healing, all this provision, all this peace, all this love, all this joy, all this forgiveness, all this righteousness…… and I don’t just grab it! Me! I don’t access the application. I don’t use it. I don’t call on it. I don’t just get into it and just soak in all that God has for me. What am I thinking? My wife has this powerful product and she got it because me and the girls have apple stuff and she sees it and says I want that too.

God has it, I want it too. I think I can still learn from my wife. God has all these applications for my life and I don’t know what I have. I thought she did not know what she has…..it is really me. God has it for me and you.

Ever seen a pool of blood? It can make you sick. I usually associate blood with death.

I have seen piles of blood over the years…..usually a mess… but I never thought about how it saved me. In Romans 8 the record reflects that we, our person, is both dead and alive. It says that if Christ is in us…our body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. (OK this is a bible lesson…a very short one).

If Christ is in us….we may die a physical death, our body is physical and it wears out, gets crushed, gets old and we die….that is for sure…. However, if Christ is in us,….our spirit is not dead, it is not subject to the physical constraints of age….it is free and alive.

Now, if Christ is not in us then we are a bloody mess.. we are alive in body for a time, a season, but it is a short season….and then we are physically dead. Then, not only is our body dead….but we are also dead in our spirit because we are separated from God.

You see, the opposite occurs if Christ is in us….we are dead to the sin in our lives, those things that constantly mess with us, we mess up on and get physically entangled in…but if we trust Christ….our spirit is eternal and more importantly, our righteousness is not because of us, what we do or don’t do, what we accomplish or don’t accomplish,…our righteousness is because of Christ…. The substitutionary work He did on the cross for us is what we benefit from…..which is basically a bloody mess.

Short bible lesson…..we are not our own, we were bought with a price…blood. A bloody mess. The price we were bought with, paid the debt of sin, and although we may physically die,…we will live forever with God.

I was in Key West last week. I have lived in Florida all my life and had never been. My wife wanted to go, it was our 20 somethingith anniversary. So, she made a reservation at a Bed and Breakfast and we headed out. Key West. For me it was for the birds.

The place was not so hot, well, actually it was hot. The air conditioner broke and the room was hot….really hot. They moved us to another room under 6 guys that came for a bachelor party. The smoke alarm kept beeping, someone wrote with some bright orange window paint on our van windows and it just was not what we had thought it would be.

So we walked along the main drag, Duval Street, which was full of just a big party. It is what it is. It was fine. As we were walking back one evening to our B and B, I saw a sparrow among the bushes. I mean, there were hundreds of people all over the place, there was loud music, confusion, a stench of overindulgence on many different levels and people jammed on top of people.

I just stopped and watched the sparrow. Simple, content, eating on seeds supplied by a free growing plant and seemingly safe and secure….content. Matthew 6:26 talks about the birds… how they really don’t do anything and God takes care of them. God loves us so much more… He will take care of us. The record goes on to talk about the flowers and how beautiful they are….God takes care of them. In context, these scriptures are pointing us to just seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness…..then all these other things will be given to us.

A sparrow in the Keys. Taken care of by God. How much more God loves me and you. Today, after you read this….just try today to first seek God….if you do,… the record reflects that he will take care of you.